Sherlock Holmes - A Study In Crimson
by GlazzKage
Summary: All Joanne Watson ever wanted was to be adopted, and when the generous Mrs. Hudson gives her that opportunity, she's excited. She's ready to return to civilian life after being a war brat for so many years. But what she doesn't know, is thar, despite running away from the war, the war followed her here. That war is Sherlock Holmes.
1. Chapter 1: Sherlock Holmes

Life doesn't really matter to you until it's been nearly taken from you seven times. I really don't think I should have been here. I've lived under the unfortunate name of a war brat for a good part of my life, because both my parents were in the military, and I had no one in the civilian world to take care of me while they fought for our country. Now, neither of my parents are in the military, because neither of them are alive. I've been shipped from the war fields of Afghanistan and now

I'm back home. But it's not really my home. I don't belong anywhere.

The entire adoption process and the idea of stripping me away from everyone I knew and loved wasn't the best thing that ever happened to me. But I've recovered enough from it. Mrs. Hudson, the lady who's adopting me, seems calm and peaceful enough to ensure me a calm and peaceful life. Tomorrow I go to live with her. For my last day alone and hopeless, the man at the front desk of the foster care services facility, Mr. Mike Stamford, tells me I should go around the city which will be my new home. And though I don't really care do it, I do it anyway.

I take my stick and head out the door, Mr. Stamford leading the way. He can't help but look at my stick as I use it to walk, and asks in concern, "You okay?"

"I'm fine." I reply. I'm not about to get into all the details of a psychosomatic disorder.

He notices the awkwardness, and tries to change the subject.

"You'll want to make some friends, wouldn't you?"

"Who'd want me for a friend?"

He chuckles a bit. "That's funny," he says, "you're the second person to say that to me today."

"Who was the first?"

By now, we've reached a building with the words "Office of the Chief Medical Examiner" written at the top. It's a morgue. We enter the building, and head toward a certain room. I can see in the window a tall, thin girl, with long, curly, black hair and high cheekbones. She's looking intently at a laptop, typing away fiercely. Without looking up, she asks, "Mike, can I borrow your phone? No signal on mine."

"What's wrong with the landline?"

"I'd rather text."

Mr. Stamford searches his pockets. He doesn't have his phone on him.

"Here," I say, "Use mine."

She swirls around in her chair and noticing my outstretched hand with my phone, she says, "Oh. Thank you."

"This is Joanne Watson." Mr. Stamford tells the girl.

She takes a sideways glance at me, and says, "Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"I'm sorry?" I reply.

"Which was it? Afghanistan or Iraq?"

"I don't understand."

"Which one did your parents die in?"

I hear Mr. Stamford gasp and in a warning tone, and I can't deny that I'm taken aback. But it doesn't really matter. At this point I'm trying not to care.

"Afghanistan." I say, "But, how did you know?"

She grins. "I know you're a war brat who's recently been sent home from Afghanistan, because you've been orphaned, and you're being adopted tomorrow. You've got a limp which your therapist thinks is psychosomatic, quite correctly, I'm afraid. That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?"

I'm in shock. How on earth did she know all that? "You told her about me?" I ask Mr. Stamford.

"Nothing at all." He says.

"Then how did she know - "

"How do you feel about the violin?" The girl asks me. I don't know how to respond. The girl clarifies herself.

"I play the violin when I think, and sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Potential sisters ought to know the worst of each other."

"_Sisters_?" I reply, aghast, "Who said anything about sisters?"

"I did. Hudson's adopting you, isn't she?" She sees my blank stare and continues, "Mike Stamford is the same man who brought me to Mrs. Hudson when she adopted me. Wasn't a difficult leap." She hands me back my phone and puts on a magnificent trench coat. "I'll see you tomorrow. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary."

"Is that it?" I ask.

"Is that what?"

"We just met and are apparently going to be living together, and you're just going to walk off like that?"

"Problem?"

"I don't even know your name! And where will I see you?"

She's opened the door, and right before she leaves, she says, "The name's Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street." And with a wink, she leaves.

"Yeah, she's _always_ like that." Mr. Stamford says with a sigh.


	2. Chapter 2: The Science Of Deduction

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. When I got back to the group home, which was where I was staying until adoption, I sat on my bed and thought.

Who was that girl?

Yes, I know her name now, but really, who was she? What kind of 17 year old kid just knows things like that? All that about me being a war brat in Afghanistan and my leg being psychosomatic, she probably knows more about me than I know about me. And yet she claimed no one told her anything about me before I met her. How on earth did she figure it all out? In my frustration, I dig my hand in my pockets, quite forgetting I had a phone in there.

Of course! She used my phone, and unless she deleted the texts she sent, I'll be able to see them. I go into the messages app, and under an unknown number, the only message sent says "IF SISTER HAS GREEN LADDER ARREST SISTER. SH."

What? What's that supposed to mean? This isn't working, so I formulate another plan of attack. To the Google!

The first result for a search of "Sherlock Holmes" brings me to a blog page - The Science Of Deduction. Funny. I have a blog page, which is hardly ever updated, despite the many constant urgings from my therapist to use it. I look around the blog, which is titled "The Science of Deduction". I spend the next twenty minutes trying to understand the vast differences of tobacco ash. She also claims to be able to identify a software engineer by his tie, or a pilot by his left thumb. This girl is definitely educated, just in a way I'd never imagine. There seems to be no other information about Sherlock Holmes, so I give up the search and go to bed.

Mrs. Hudson comes to pick me up in the morning. She's a middle aged lady, and very happy to see me. She talks and tries to make me feel comfortable while we ride in the cab that's taking us home. "Sherlock told me she met you yesterday," she says, "I didn't think Mike would have you meet her, or I would have come along, too!"

"About Sherlock," I say, "who exactly is she?"

"She's an extremely helpful little girl," Mrs. Hudson says.

"Little!" I respond, "She's at least a foot taller than me!"

"That's because you're short, dear."

I sit back in my seat. I guess I am short.

Soon enough, we reach home. We're on Baker Street, and I can see a "221B" plated on the door of the apartment. This is exactly where Sherlock said to meet. Now, where is she?

"She's probably not at home yet." Mrs. Hudson says when I ask her, "She's been at the mortuary a lot this past week. I suspect she'll be back before dinner."

For the time being, I look around the house. "Oh, Sherlock," Mrs. Hudson says, the tone of disappointment wavering in her voice. And she has a right to feel disappointed, as the room is a cluttered mess. The room is fairly large and pleasant, aside from the stacks of newspapers, several computers, file cabinets, boxes, books and a terrifying collection of what looks like weapons, scattered about here and there. The kitchen table is cluttered with test tubes and jars and Bunsen burners.

"Your room is upstairs, dear. It's across from Sherlock's." Mrs. Hudson tells me as she does her best to tidy things up. I hear the door open and see Sherlock Holmes step inside. "Oh, you've come!" She says.

"Sherlock, why is the apartment such a mess?" Mrs. Hudson asks.

"It's for my work." Sherlock replies. Mrs. Husdon shakes her head, as if this kind of thing has happened before.

There are two rooms upstairs, one for Sherlock and one for me. Downstairs is a small sitting-room, furnished with chairs and a desk and some shelves, all cluttered with stuff. I look to the closest shelf.

"That's a skull." I comment. It's sitting right next to a pile of papers, which has a knife embedded in it.

"Friend of mine," Sherlock says, "Well, I say _friend_..."

And so, my unlikely friendship with Sherlock Holmes began.

It was particularly easy to live with Sherlock Holmes, at least, that's what I thought for the first few weeks. She was quiet in her own ways. She never slept past ten, and was always awake before I was. She played the violin, quite well in fact, if I asked her to, but when left to her own devices, she would more often than not just scrape her bow across the strings. Her favourite thing to do was be in the kitchen - or the living room, or her room - doing experiments. Sometimes she'd go out, and take a walk, traversing all over the city. And yet other times, whenever a particular experiment was being rather difficult, she'd get into a fit, and either jump around the room, having no respect for the furniture, or sit crumpled up, somehow squeezing her tall figure into a blob on a chair. She'd be mute for days, and then suddenly figure out the solution to her problem. But when these fits were over, I noticed a kind of lost look in her eyes. She didn't like being lost.

My curiosity about her grew every day, and though I figured some things out, there was always more to be unraveled. She was brilliant, an absolute genius. She'd know everything about a subject which interested her, she could notice the tiniest things in her observations, but her ignorance was almost as great as her brilliance. Her knowledge of the extraordinary was exquisite but some of her common knowledge was nonexistent. I had to teach her about the existence of outer space.

"You seem surprised," she said after I confronted her about it, "But now that I know, I will do my best to forget it."

"Forget! Why would you do that?"

"A fool will think the key to being smart is to shove as much information as he can into his brain. But in reality, the brain is like a hard drive. There is only so much storage in this hard drive, so it is ridiculous to try to learn everything. I only keep the things that matter to me."

"But, the Solar System!"

"What use is it to me? It doesn't matter to me if we go round the sun or the moon, or like teddy bears around the garden, it doesn't affect me or my work."

I could see there was no use in arguing with her. Sherlock was a girl of her own methods, and there was no sense in trying to force your own methods upon her.


	3. Chapter 3: The Fourth Murder

I had entered into the school system. Sherlock and I would catch the bus every morning to get there. I remember when we first took the bus, everyone gave Sherlock a snide look. She didn't seem to have any friends.

"Hello, Freak," one girl said to her. Sherlock stayed silent. The girl looked at me. "Who's this?" She asked.

"Colleague of mine," Sherlock said, "Joanne Watson. Joanne, meet Sally Donovan. Old friend."

"A colleague, how'd you get a colleague? Did you kidnap her?"

"No, she didn't." I said. I didn't like this Sally Donovan very much.

"I think I'll be off now," Sherlock said, and sat at a seat a row in front of where Sally was sitting. I went to sit with Sherlock.

"Well, you know what I think, don't you?" Sally said from her seat.

"Yes," Sherlock replies, "and I even know you didn't make it to that basketball date you had planned."

"I was sick."

"I'm sure you were, and that's why Philip came over, wasn't it?"

Sally gave Sherlock a dead stare, and refused to talk.

At school, we went to our respective classes. Sherlock was in a biology class at the same time I was in English. Many of the kids were on their phones before class started. Some were texting while others were last minute studying for the vocabulary quiz we had that day, and still others were wasting time, doing challenges.

"I finally unlocked Task Five!" One kid said while he waved his phone in the air.

"Nice job!" Another replied, "Now you're only three Tasks behind Emma!"

Emma was the star player at these challenges. She had unlocked so many more of those Tasks than anyone else had, and was considered a little less than a god around here. I never did these challenges, nor did I understand the craze over them.

"Where is Emma, anyway?"

I looked around the room. Funny. Emma was almost always at school. Though, her attendance lately had been fluctuating. It was flu season; perhaps she was just sick. Nothing seemed to be wrong, but I could help but be slightly bothered.

After school, I tried to find Sherlock so we could go on the bus together, but she was busy with a microscope in a chemistry class, and wasn't finished until after the bus had left. That meant we had to walk. I had a psychosomatic leg! Walking wasn't my favourite hobby.

"Couldn't we get an Uber or something?" I asked Sherlock as we exited the school.

"No," she responded, "Or, maybe you can. I have something to do, and I need to walk to do it."

I considered leaving her, but I didn't know the way back home, and I didn't want to be rude to her. We walked along what seemed to be the right direction, until Sherlock took a turn into a back alley that didn't seem right at all.

"I don't think we're supposed to be here." I told her.

"No, we're not at all." She replied, and stopped in front of a shoe. But this shoe was awkwardly placed on the ground, and if you followed it a bit, you'd see it was still on a foot, and the person who's foot it was wasn't sleeping. And it wasn't just anyone. It was Emma.

This wasn't the first time I saw a dead body. I was in a war zone after all. I went to school with a bunch of other kids, some who were military brats like me, and others who were natives in the country we were in. It was normal, though still horrifying, to hear that someone died. But I thought I had left all that behind me.

Sherlock kneeled next to the body, and after putting on surgical gloves which she produced from her bag, she expertly examined it. She looked at the edge of Emma's shoe. At the bottom of one shoe, written in red, was the word "RACHE".

"It's blood, and it's fresh." Sherlock said. "Couldn't be more than two hours old, which means she was killed recently."

"We need to call the police." I said, trying my hardest not to show my fear.

Sherlock got out her phone and sent a single text. Then she resumed examining the corpse.

"Sherlock, we need to go home." I said.

"Yeah, but this is more fun."

"Fun? There's a girl lying dead!"

"Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper than that."

Was that a challenge? Immediately, I got to work. Though I wasn't an expert, I had learned a thing or two about the human body during my time in Afghanistan. My mother was an army doctor, and the things I learned were from overhearing her talk to other grown ups. I checked Emma's face. No bruises, or marks of any kind.

"Maybe it's asphyxiation?" I said, after a bit more examination, "Probably passed out, choked on her own vomit. Could have been a seizure."

I heard sirens. The police cars rolled up to where we were standing. Out from the car, a middle aged man, whose black hair was beginning to gray, came and approached Sherlock.

"Lestrade," Sherlock said, "I know I can solve this one."

"Don't be silly," the man, who was apparently Lestrade, said, "You're a child. Don't get yourself into this mess."

"It's a bit too late for that. I'm already in it."

He stared at her for a moment before telling us that we needed to go home.

"You realize these are linked, right?" Sherlock asked Lestrade.

"What's linked?"

"The murders."

Lestrade pressed his face, as if he'd been through this too many times before. "They're suicides." He reasoned, "And one of them was an accident."

"Oh no," Sherlock said, "they're definitely murders. Serial murders, which only means that there's a serial killer."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not ridiculous! It's logic! Can you really be telling me that this is the fourth death in this general area you've encountered in the past month, and none of that is ridiculous?"

"Nothing suggests that they're linked."

"Except for that they were all in an area that they had no reason to be. There were no notes, or signs."

Lestrade looked at Sherlock, and the pressed expression returned to his face. Sherlock was silent for a moment before continuing.

"That's not how I'd kill myself."


End file.
